


The cold light of earliest spring

by destinyofshipwreck



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2008, F/M, Surgical angst pre- and post-
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 22:39:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinyofshipwreck/pseuds/destinyofshipwreck
Summary: "We don't have to talk," she says, and touches his lips, and he touches hers, and she leans over to pull off her boots at the same time he leans over to do it for her, and they nearly collide, and the tension breaks and she's giggling like a kid, suddenly, as he leads her up the half-flight of stairs and down the hall to his bedroom.It's not like it is with Fedor.





	The cold light of earliest spring

Scott’s the first to notice that it's gotten intolerably bad, which only becomes obvious to her in retrospect.

It's after the free dance at Worlds, when they're taking their bows, when she presses her shins against the ice, one at a time, letting him pull her up by the wrist and twirl her around before she takes a knee again.

"You're subtle, Tess," he says quietly as they skate off together. He's supporting half her weight with his arm tight around her ribs and it's not enough; she almost falls over with all her weight on one foot when she leans over to put on a skate guard.

He helps her onto and off of the podium with unusual care, and he squeezes her thigh under the table at the press conference while they're answering questions to help keep her present and focused, and he takes her hand when they walk out after so she can lean on him a little, discreetly, and he lets her ignore him until they're done for the day.

"I know you don't want to talk about it, but it's been bad for a while," he tells her in the hotel lobby.

"You're right, I don't," she says.

"I'm here, if you ever do," he says, but he doesn't press her when she lets go of his hand in front of the door to her room.

Back in Michigan she allows Kate to shepherd her from appointment to appointment, between massage therapists and physiotherapists and waiting rooms for more and more intricate diagnostic procedures.  _Scott would know_ , she thinks, whenever she's asked for a history. How long has it been this bad? When did it start? Where was the bright line supposed to have been between acceptable pain and pathology?

She thinks he'd probably say yes if she asked him to sit with her, but the whole thing is humiliating, to be asked so many questions about how long she's known there was a problem with her legs that wasn’t a problem with her work ethic, and to not have the answers. So she doesn't ask, and he doesn't volunteer, and the summer wears on.

The doctor from Skate Canada meets with her again after her surgical consult to make sure she understands what has been recommended. He does it in an affected soothing tone, like you'd use to talk to a frightened animal, or like the words might have too many syllables for her little-girl brain to grasp: "bilateral", "anterior", "fasciotomy". 

Recovery is supposed to be numerically quantifiable, like competition scoring, and unlike trying to pin down a narrative of pain in the past, which is so nebulous; she can't wait.

Scott doesn't reply to the email she sends him with the surgery date. Scott doesn't come up to London on the day of, even though she half-expects to see him. Scott doesn't call her before or after, and Scott doesn't send a card, and Scott doesn't visit.

At home afterward, she measures herself to the millimetre, and keeps meticulous track of her dimensions in a Blueline day planner by the bedside that she's annotated with projected healing milestones and benchmarks, week over week, an optimistically short timeframe.

Sometimes she imagines what she would say if Scott bothered to check on her. 

Great news: walked to the bathroom unassisted, and it only increased swelling by half a centimetre, which subsided after an hour. Successfully completed one set of five lunges and then took a two-hour nap. Attempted the rocker board on one foot and toppled over. A real banner day in the rehab trenches.

Of course, he doesn't call.

He doesn't call, and he doesn't call, and he doesn't call, but he does show up unannounced one day, a Saturday, five weeks into the recovery schedule, in the middle of the morning.

"Come on, let's go for a drive," he says, instead of "Hello," or "I missed you," or "I'm sorry for being an asshole."

"I'm going to the gym today," she says.

"This is better," he says, and she looks at Kate, who shrugs uselessly, then at him, wearing an expression of earnest hopefulness, and, oh, whatever, it's not like there isn't a treadmill at home she can use later, even if he does waste her whole day. She pulls a light jacket on over her sweats and follows him to his truck.

"Where are we going?" she asks, when he takes the eastbound exit onto the 403.

"Escarpment," he says.

"Scott, I can't run stairs, I'm not even allowed on the elliptical until next week," she says.

"Trust me," he says.

It's an hour and a half on the freeway, listening to the radio and not talking, before he pulls into a lot at the golf course at the foot of the stairs they used to run together all the time in the summers, the most spacious set, with forest on both sides still wearing the last of its autumn red and gold, no road crossings, and the occasional slender waterfall to admire on the way up.

She's fine on her own two feet—slow walking pace, with good form, pushing herself up from her glutes and quads and not her calves—until the first landing, where she feels a warning throb in her shins and stops to sit down on the bench there and assess things.

"Great work," says Scott, clapping her on the back, and then he leans over and scoops her up into his arms, and she thinks about protesting but decides against it, and he carries her the rest of the way, two hundred and nine more stairs, with three switchbacks, and runners in droves passing them on the left. 

He's sweating at the top, and his heart rate is elevated, but his breathing is steady. It feels so good to be close to his exertion again that when he sets her back on the ground, she leans into him like he might embrace her, like it's a kind of triumph.

He flinches, his arms stiff at his sides.

She steps back, and she makes a slow circuit around the lookout instead, like she didn't mean it.

"Down'll be worse for you," says Scott, when she makes her way back to him, and he picks her up again. She wraps an arm around his shoulders, and he wraps an arm around her waist, and he takes the stairs smoothly and cautiously, with no jostling.

A handful of people who'd passed them before are passing them again, on their second or third time up, and she's a little self-conscious, but Scott's expression is so focused and serious that it's hard to feel too embarrassed.

The trip up and back down takes nearly an hour, the shortest and slowest set of stairs they've ever tackled together. She's worn out from the effort of supporting herself in his arms by the time they're back at the parking lot.

He sets her down again, but she doesn't have the energy for triumph anymore, and she's relieved when he comes around to the passenger side of his truck to open the door and help her in.

Without asking, he pulls into the drive-thru of the Tim's in Brantford for a half-dozen doughnuts (vanilla dip, double chocolate, walnut crunch) and a hot chocolate (large), which he hands to her, wordlessly.

They crack open the doughnuts in Kate's driveway and polish them off in five minutes, three each, one after another. He looks at her expectantly after, a crumb of sugar glaze stuck to his lip, which she doesn't brush away for him. It's not enough of an apology.

"I'm not talking to you, if you’re not talking to me," she says, a little petulantly.

"Sure," he says.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes, then he rests his hand on the console between them, palm-up, and almost reflexively, she reaches for it, and their fingers interlock. 

Scott's back the next Saturday, again unannounced. Kate's ecstatic to see him.

"I'll make him bring me back by five," says Tessa. There are flurries outside, though the snow hasn't stuck yet, so it's firmly parka weather; antsy about putting pressure on the fresh scars, she works her feet into trail shoes instead of boots, which will have to do, wherever they’re going.

"It's so nice for you to get fresh air," Kate says, waving her out the front door.

"How's your recovery?" Scott asks her in the truck, once they're on the freeway again.

"Like you give a shit," she says, a little sharper than she intends.

"Let me know if there's anything you need," he says.

He takes her to Cootes Paradise this time, where there's a fairly well-maintained trail through and around the marsh, no stairs, and a bylaw prohibiting jogging.

The half-frozen footing is uneven enough to be a challenge to her ankles, but the elevation changes are not significant enough to present a real problem, and he's right about it being better than the gym, it’s a nice change of scenery from watching daytime TV on the elliptical or the stationary bike.

"I'm allowed to start mobilizing the scars this week," she says, when they've finished the loop and have climbed back into his truck. They had the trail to themselves, though the weather isn't even that bad, and the parking lot is empty except for them.

Scott looks at her, and he doesn't say anything, but she discerns an invitation. She turns sideways in the passenger seat so she can drape her calves across his lap, her shoulders against the window.

He pushes up the legs of her sweatpants, and there they are.

It's not like he hasn't seen scars on her before; they're both covered in nicks and slices.

But something about the purposiveness of the surgical scars feels different and more raw to her, the length of them, knowing that they were an intervention because of what she did to her own body.

Scott looks up to her face, but it's only like he always has before, to make sure she's comfortable, and not with pity or disgust.

He massages lightly, first on the left shin, then on the right, rubbing along the length of the scar on either side of it, from the knee moving down to the ankle. It's the first time in months that she's been touched by someone other than a doctor or physiotherapist, and his attention is not an appraisal of her condition, and his hands are so familiar. She closes her eyes.

When he's done, still without speaking, he shifts the driver's seat as far back as it can go, and half-beckons, half-pulls her across the console, so she’s sitting sideways in his lap.

"I heard that you're skating with sandbags," she says drowsily, into his shoulder. "Is it true?"

"Yeah," he says. "Marina keeps trying to find me new girls to practice with, like you left forever or something, and I don't want to get used to anyone else, or give anyone the wrong impression, so."

"Sandbags it is," she says.

"Mostly they're not as graceful as you," he says. "But there's one that gives great face, you'll have to fight it for me when you come back."

The arm he's got wrapped around her is warm, and with his free hand, he's tracing the seamline of her sweatpants up and down the outside of her thigh.

Something impulsive and selfish bubbles up in her, something angry about her body only ever in pain, and she stills his hand with her own hand, on his wrist, and moves it between her thighs, pressing his fingers against herself.

"Tessa," he breathes.

"Don't talk to me," she whispers back.

She can feel that she's hot against his fingers, and he curls them against her through the thick fabric, and he leans in like he wants to kiss her. No, she thinks, there are some lines that they shouldn't cross, it's too  _intimate_.

"Don't kiss me," she murmurs, and he nods, and slides his hand into her pants to touch her skin to skin, cupping his fingers around her cunt and brushing her clit with his thumb, and touches her mouth with his other hand, drawing his palm across her lips, then tracing them with the tip of his index finger.

Dimly, she wonders if this might not be worse than kissing him—he touches her with those hands, all over, every working day of her life, in front of cameras, in front of everyone.

Then he slides the tip of his index finger into her mouth, tentatively, and two fingers into her cunt, less tentative, and she loses track of worry and the future and lets him stroke her, setting a pace for her, his fingers slow inside her, his breath hot in her ear, his cock throbbing against her hip. She comes with a little shudder, biting his palm, and he holds still inside her for a minute or two before withdrawing his fingers and sliding them into his own mouth to lick them clean. She wants to taste herself on his lips and his tongue, desperately, but it can't be helped.

What brings her back to herself is that her shins ache: the surgical sites still register changes in her blood pressure, and she winces, clambering off of Scott's lap and back into the passenger seat, where she can prop her feet up on the dash. Her calves aren't visibly swollen, but it's hard to tell without the measuring tape.

Scott starts the truck, and the radio keeps them company all the way back into London. In front of Kate's house he says, "See you next weekend," and brushes her lips with his fingers again, and he waits until she's inside the house to pull out of the cul-de-sac and drive away.

Winter arrives in earnest in the intervening week, and with the snow there's no excuse for any little excursions around the greenbelt, but Scott shows up again on Saturday, after lunch. This time he takes her north, past Western, onto Highway 4.

"My folks are out of town," he says when he cuts the engine in front of his parents' house.

"Oh," she says. The air between them feels heavy; she's not sure what to say.

"You could come inside," he says.

"Okay," she says, and he's out of the truck before she knows it and opening the passenger side door, and offering her a hand up the icy steps, and taking her coat to hang on a hook in the foyer.

"Tessa," he says. "I don’t know if you—"

"We don't have to talk," she says, and touches his lips, and he touches hers, and she leans over to pull off her boots at the same time he leans over to do it for her, and they nearly collide, and the tension breaks and she's giggling like a kid, suddenly, as he leads her up the half-flight of stairs and down the hall to his bedroom.

It's not like it is with Fedor.

Fedor likes to spread her legs and kneel between them and tell her to touch herself while he watches, and Fedor likes to slide into her right when she's pushed herself to the edge, so the first thing he feels is her coming around him. Fedor likes to grab her hand and slip it down the front of his jeans and hold her wrist in a crushing grip while she jerks him off, and Fedor’s kisses overpower her, he bites her lips so they're bruised deep red, and Fedor pinches and twists her nipples between his fingertips so they hurt when she puts her shirt back on to leave, like a reminder to last the rest of the day that where she  _should_  be is naked, in Fedor's bed, for as long as he wants her there.

Scott gasps when she unbuttons her shirt, like he hasn't seen her in panties and a sports bra thousands of times, and he's so careful with the blouse when he slips it off her shoulders, like she's made of porcelain or like it'll be ruined if it creases. He guides her to the edge of the bed and kneels in front of her there and kisses her thighs and her hands, breathing her in, until she's arching her back to press her cunt against his mouth and knotting her hands in his hair, and he fucks her with his fingers and tongue like he can't get enough. He bites his lip when she reaches for his cock, like it hadn't occurred to him that she might want to touch him, and he fumbles in the nightstand for a condom like he hadn't expected to take his pants off, and he sinks into her so slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, and when he comes inside her with a soft  _Oh_ , his whole body shivers, and after he pulls out of her he slides his fingers inside her again, where she's wet and swollen and aching, and he wrenches another orgasm out of her, holding her close.

She comes to rest afterward half on top of him, sweat pooling in the hollows of her collarbones, one leg draped across his shins, breathing hard.

"Why did you leave me alone?" she asks him eventually. His fingertips, tracing light figure-eights between her shoulder blades, slow to a stop.

He swallows before he answers; she can see he's been expecting the question, and dreading it.

"You were hurting yourself," he says. "And I watched it happen, and I didn't stop you. It's my fault."

He's a grown man, and his body is muscular and taut underneath hers, but he still has a boy's face, a boy's sparse scattering of coarse hair over his chin and upper lip, a pale imitation of a five o'clock shadow, not enough to be rough against her cheek. His boy's face is flushed, like he's about to cry.

"It's not," she says. "It's nobody's fault," instead of "As if you could stop me from doing anything," or "I was so afraid that you would make  _me_ comfort  _you,_ and here we fucking are."

He does cry then, a little, just for a few moments, and she brushes the tears from his cheeks and holds him until he can regulate his own breathing and relax, and she orders herself not to resent it, and she almost succeeds.

He drops her off at home again, around dinnertime.

"I, uh," she says, halfway out of his truck. "I'm coming back next weekend, I think, if I get cleared, so, you don't have to visit again."

"That was fast," he says. "Let me know?"

"Okay," she says, and she gives him a little wave through the window when she shuts the door.

Kate drives her to Canton the next Sunday, a snowy afternoon in the middle of December, and she doesn't see Scott that evening, not until the next morning, her first back at the rink. She steps tentatively out onto the ice and gingerly tests out her range of motion, which feels okay, and he comes up behind her and puts both hands on her waist.

"Vacation's over?" he says, teasingly.

"Yeah, it was very relaxing," she says.

"I'm glad you're back," he says, and picks her up in an exaggerated bear hug, swaying from side to side.

"Scott," she says, "Now that I am, we—we can't do it anymore, not talking, I mean. We need to focus on communication, to be ready."

"For Vancouver?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says. "We already missed two months because of me, I don't want it to screw anything up more than that, which it might, if we—"

"If we aren't talking," he says, understanding her.

"Right," she says.

He puts a finger to her lips. "Say no more."

Marina calls for his attention over by the boards just then and he's distracted, looking over Tessa's shoulder, but she shivers at his touch, and she's sure that he saw.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know  
> what despair is; then  
> winter should have meaning for you.
> 
> \-- Louise Glück, from "Snowdrops"


End file.
